Chapter 4 Chapter 3 The Philosophy of the Mayans

You have a kidnapper, and I have a mozzarella knife. You have a mace, I have a celestial cap. You have the watermelon cannon, I have the Pacific Ocean. ——Kanbijaya, Emperor Taizu Wu of the Javanese Dynasty, "An Open Letter to the Mongol Invaders". The Maya's philosophy of life has always been a fascinating research topic. It is elusive, but it is clearly reflected in the social life of the Maya.If one needs to sum it up in the simplest terms, the one that comes closest to the origins of Mayan philosophy is this: "Out of sight, out of reality." This is a kind of passive positivism, where existence is not existence unless it is verified by the eyes.Then, when some existence threatens the Mayans, the first reaction of these natural philosophers is to cover their eyes and refuse to confirm, so that the threat logically does not exist.

They'll keep their eyes covered until they feel safe, or until they don't need to think about safety anymore - it all depends on how full the beast is before them.These Central American jungle beasts are also believers in Mayan philosophy, but they like to prove it with their mouths instead of their eyes, and their attitude towards life is much more positive than the Mayans. When the Yin Shang colonial legions—which had changed their names since they landed—attacked the Naheim tribe, it was this passive defensive attitude adopted by most of the Mayans that impressed the invaders. Since the successful landing, Commander Youhouxi has been busy consolidating the landing site. He hopes to build a strong camp here to resist any possible attacks from the Mayans.During this period, Commander Youhouxi also sent several scout teams to scout the surrounding situation.

The wizards were busy treating the Yin Shang warriors who were not acclimatized to the local environment. This was a severe test, because no one was familiar with the local herbs, so they had to use a sledgehammer as an anesthetic. This did not help the treatment, but at least it could calm the patient down. . The only ones with nothing to do are the two hundred public relations specialists who spend their days wandering the jungle not far from the camp, trying to speak to any creature they see.This experiment failed on most creatures, and even an expert was taken away by a jaguar, but the experiment on macaws was a great success.

Macaws are very happy to learn four-tone intonation from these outsiders, which can give them more opportunities to play tricks.The public relations experts were even more overjoyed. The so-called highest state of controlling public opinion is to let everyone repeat your words perfectly without any thinking. These parrots are obviously the best audience. To this end, experts also launched a "protection of macaws" campaign within the Legion, warning hunters and chefs that it is bad behavior to eat parrots.Most people readily accept this conclusion. Macaws have too little meat and too much hair, and they are not very popular at the dinner table.

Even today, a few words about public relations theory can be heard in the mouths of some parrots deep in the jungles of Central America.In fact, the writing of this book also partly refers to the remarks of these parrot descendants, so I will not thank them one by one here. Commander Youhouxi's scout team worked very effectively, and they soon discovered a Mayan tribe twelve kilometers away from the landing site.The scouts reported that the current situation in that tribe was very calm, and the residents maintained their original pace of life, completely unaware of the arrival of the Yin-Shang Legion...or they pretended not to notice the arrival of the Yin-Shang Legion.

Commander You Houxi carefully analyzed the situation, and he determined that the small tribe—later learned that its name was Naheim—was the logistics base of the Maya United Marine Police.If this tribe can be controlled, not only can a large amount of supplies be obtained, but also the field of activity of the Yin Shang Legion can be expanded.In fact, if possible, he urgently needs a local native as a guide to understand the local political system and military strength, but translation is a big problem. The offensive of the Yin Shang colonial army began in the early morning of July 16, 205 BC in the Republican calendar.In order to ensure the effect of the attack, in addition to the necessary left behind troops and food hunting troops, Commander Youhouxi dispatched almost all of the main force: 3,000 warriors equipped with bronze swords and wooden shields, 3,000 soldiers equipped with long daggers and long spears. Spearmen, fifteen hundred archers, and fifty public relations specialists equipped themselves with macaws.

They sang the high-spirited battle songs of the Shang Dynasty, and drove to the Mayan tribe in high spirits, with the sound of orderly footsteps rumbling.In front of the team was a jungle path less than half a meter wide, while behind the team was a wide and messy road. Commander Youhouxi rode on the mount of a wild donkey he had just captured, and patrolled back and forth.The wild donkey, who was captured this morning in a meadow on the other side of the ridge, was at first recalcitrant and refused to cooperate with anyone - including public relations experts.Once someone puts the rein on it, it stands upright, or kicks with its hind hooves.This was the largest resistance encountered by the Yin Shang Legion since its landing.

The army is about to leave, and there is no time to slowly domesticate it.Commander Youhouxi took a more extreme quick-fix method. He put on his full set of bronze armor, and then stepped onto the back of the wild donkey.Yin merchants were not familiar with the ratio of copper, tin and lead in bronze smelting, and they did not have a periodic table of elements, so the bronzes of Yin Shang were generally very heavy.The heavily armed Commander Youhouxi sat down on the back of the wild donkey. The donkey let out a mournful cry and lowered its head in humiliation, unable to repeat itself again.

"Sometimes, violent suppression is more effective than reasoning, especially for donkeys." Commander You Houxi engraved this experience on a piece of wood at his waist. It took about three-and-a-half hours for this large force to travel, and it was almost noon when they entered an open area in the jungle.This was the time when the sun was at its most violent in a day, and the Mayan sun god seemed unwilling to see his people being bullied, so he shot the most scorching lightsaber at these oriental people. There was some commotion among the soldiers, some of them asked for rest, some asked for lunch, and more people hid under the lush vegetation on both sides of the road to enjoy the shade.The vegetation around here is very lush, and there are natural holes under many bushes, so many people drilled in.At this time, the follow-up team of the Yinshang Corps was still marching into the open space, and soon the open space was full of people, and they made loud noises. Commander You Houxi couldn't help frowning when he saw this situation.The discipline that had been honed by the sea had slackened in this damp and sweltering place.In fact, he is also responsible for this. Commander You Houxi carefully considered every detail of the military, but forgot to bring a cook.

If they turn back now, the Yinshang Corps will suffer dishonor and humiliation.Thinking of this, Commander Youhouxi called the scouts. "How far is it from the Mayan tribe?" "Here it is." The scout replied calmly. "What?" Commander Youhouxi roared, and the wild donkey under his crotch moved uncomfortably, "Then when is the best time for us to attack?" "In fact, we have captured it." The scout continued to answer calmly. Commander Youhouxi was silent for a while, and began to look around. This is just a small basin that is a little sparser than the surrounding jungle. There is no sign of trees being cut down, no smooth road, no smoky traces of a fire, and most importantly Yes, there is no such thing as a house.In short, there is not a trace here that meets Commander Youhouxi's definition of "civilization."

Commander Youhouxi asked gloomyly, "Why didn't I see any traces of logging in the nearby forest?" "The Mayans couldn't make tools." "I didn't see the road either." "They are used to flying between the trees with the help of rattan." "Then where are the traces of the fire?" "Their staple food is fruit and lettuce." "Then tell me..." Commander Youhouxi seemed to give up, "What's the difference between them and monkeys?" "I know at least one difference. The Mayans lived in their own houses." The scouts had clearly investigated the living habits of the Mayans during the reconnaissance a few days ago. Commander Youhouxi looked around again, but he couldn't find any "houses".Before he opened his mouth to ask, the soldiers who were enjoying the shade in the bush holes suddenly screamed, and almost every soldier in the innermost hole found that there were still people hiding at the end of the tree hole. The order on the scene immediately became chaotic. The soldiers in the cave wanted to rush out, the soldiers outside wanted to drill in, and the soldiers who didn't know the situation thought that the lunch had finally been delivered, so they took off their bronze helmets and turned them around, waiting to put on the meal. Facing the chaotic situation, Commander Youhouxi immediately drew out his dagger and stabbed the wild donkey.The wild donkey ate it suddenly and neighed loudly in pain.The frequency oscillation of the donkey braying up to 6,000 Hz suppressed everyone in an instant, and the swords and spears fell to the ground, because everyone covered their ears with their hands. Commander Youhouxi, who immediately controlled the situation, rode his horse, no, he rode his donkey to drive away all the soldiers outside the hole, tore a vine from a tree around him and wrapped it around the wild barking donkey's mouth to make it quiet.Immediately afterwards he got off his donkey and loudly ordered the soldiers in the cave to find out all suspicious people. The arrest process didn't last long, and the soldiers pulled out about two hundred people from about two dozen holes.The two hundred people are old and young, male and female, and they should belong to a natural community in terms of population ratio.Judging from their race, their skin color is also yellow, and they have domed skulls, somewhat similar to Yin merchants.However, most of them were naked, and only a few of them wrapped their necks with plant fibers of unknown texture, leaving other parts bare. To the surprise of the Yin and Shang soldiers, the two hundred men, women and children all maintained the same posture, covering their eyes with their hands and trembling. At that time, Commander Youhouxi didn't understand the negative empirical philosophy of the Mayans. He just found it weird, so he asked the public relations experts accompanying the army for help. Public relations theory believes that no matter where human beings are, they all have a common psychological negativity. They refuse to face reality and use it to gain an unreliable sense of security.The only difference is that in some areas, this characteristic is recessive and personal; in others it is explicit and even rises to a general attitude towards life, and the Mayan civilization clearly belongs to the latter. Of course, this was the conclusion reached after Yinshang public relations experts had collected enough samples, which was a long time later.At that time in the Naheim tribe, the expert's answer to Commander Yuhouxi was simply: "They are very scared." Commander You Houxi ordered all the older men in the captives, as well as those with plant fibers wrapped around their necks, to be brought to him.According to experience, the old man is often in the position of the decision-maker in the uncivilized tribe.As for those people with plant fibers wrapped around their necks, if they were placed in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, this would be the lowest slave attire, but in the Mayan tribe they should be nobles or wealthy people, because everyone else is naked. The interrogation was not going well, and the prisoners refused to take their hands off their eyes.Commander Youhouxi had no choice but to use inhumane methods, asking people to forcibly break off the fingers of the prisoners, and use small wooden sticks to prop up the eyelids. The first reaction of these captives after regaining their sight was to howl and roll on the ground.This is understandable. When a person finds that he can't even escape from reality, then his life can be said to have really failed. Impatient soldiers drew their swords across the necks of the noisy captives to silence them.These Mayans felt a threatening chill on their necks, they couldn't close their eyes again to prove the non-existence of this threat, so they obediently closed their mouths. The next problem is language. According to the results of the excavation of the remains of the ancient Mayan civilization, the Mayan civilization did have writing.These square hieroglyphs are all engraved on the walls of the Mayan pyramids, and the writing method is so complicated that some people insist that they are just decorative patterns. The academic world is still unable to perfectly decipher Mayan text, because the system of Mayan text is very unrestrained: its entire grammatical rules show a kind of Brownian motion in the linguistic sense, whether it is vowels and consonants, tense changes or subject-predicate sentence patterns The structure maintains distinct random characteristics, and these basic language elements, like Virginians at festivals, jump and swing crazily throughout the sentence until the entire structure is fragmented, showing extremely fanatical nonlinear diffraction oscillations, which makes chaos Scholars love it. What's even more frightening is that the grammatical rules of Mayan characters change according to the solar calendar, which has eighteen months in total. In other words, the above-mentioned grammatical confusion must be multiplied by eighteen.During World War II, the U.S. military used this kind of text as plaintext codes, successfully destroying several Japanese deciphering stations, and all the deciphering personnel inside went crazy. Therefore, some scholars infer that the most important occupation of the Maya may be grammar teachers, only they can fully understand the strange structure of Mayan grammar, so as to communicate with the sun god smoothly (Note: God knows).These grammar teachers eventually formed the priestly class. What is puzzling to people is that they have not found even a single trace of writing in any other Mayan ruins, except for the writing that is neatly carved on the pyramids.Academics generally believe that this is the result of an attempt by the Mayan grammar teacher class to monopolize knowledge, while some Mexican patriots claim that this shows that the Mayans invented the paperless office as early as BC. Commander You Houxi is a smart man with reverse thinking, and he was not troubled by this difficulty.He thought of a genius idea: Since he could not communicate with the captives in Mayan, teach them to speak Oracle. When white European missionaries first set foot on African soil, they were similarly ignorant of the local language.So the missionaries used the Bible to teach the Africans to speak Latin and French, and then taught them how to sign land transfers in standard cursive script.Commander Youhouxi just used this method 1,500 years in advance with foresight. Two hundred prisoners were escorted back to the camp.Commander Youhouxi ordered each of them to be equipped with a public relations expert, three chattering soldiers and as many parrots as possible. Fatigue bombing.Soon all the human teachers were exhausted, so they all had to switch to parrots to continue. This frenzied force-feeding strategy lasted for two months, and one hundred of the two hundred captives could not withstand the blow of rapping and died, and another ninety-seven were eliminated because they fell into a state of madness, and then were taken away by hunters. As bait for hunting wild animals.Ironically, Mayan males were apparently much less able to handle this than Mayan females. In the end, only three Mayans survived.One of them is an elder in his seventies who has already been deaf; the other is a five-year-old child who is just learning to speak, and although he is proficient in oracle bone inscriptions, he has a little bit of Mayan inscriptions. Nor will it. The only one who can be called "fruit" is a Mayan woman in her forties.She gave full play to the characteristics of women in this age group who are good at listening and willing to spread information. She graduated with honors and became the only translator in the hands of the Yin Shang Corps who knew Maya and Oracle. Commander Youhouxi couldn't wait to call this woman who claimed to be "Fu Rong" into the palace. He was eager to learn everything about the entire Mayan civilization.Furong is very fat, his whole body is glowing with health, his breasts hang down to his belly button, and only two small eyes are very clever.Since she learned oracle bone inscriptions, she has been diligently practicing her oral English everywhere, and soon became the most enthusiastic person in the camp to spread information, and she was meticulous. Seeing this woman, Commander You Houxi couldn't help thinking of Ji Chang.This sworn enemy of the Yin Shang was once detained in Xianli. According to an official in Xiqi who did not want to be named, there, Ji Chang deduced the secret of defeating Emperor Xin and passed it on to Jiang Shang.Jiang Shang deeply understood the mystery, and then launched a public relations campaign to overthrow Shang's rule with countless rumors, rumors and gossip.It is said that the secret of Ji Chang's performance in Xianli is two words: "Bagua" Commander You Houxi gave Fu Rong a majestic look. It was the first time that the latter met the supreme officer alone, so he seemed a little timid and kept his mouth closed. "Can you fully understand me now?" "Yes, my lord." Fu Rong's pronunciation was very standard. "Very good." Commander Youhouxi nodded in satisfaction, "First tell me about the situation of your tribe." "We are a city-state, not a tribe." Fu Rong pleaded bravely.